FILE – In this Aug. 21, 2014, file photo, U.S. Navy Adm. William McRaven, the next chancellor of the University of Texas System, addresses the Texas Board of Regents, in Austin, Texas. McRaven is running into political problems in his role as chancellor of the University of Texas System. The retired Navy admiral who planned the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden faces an uncertain future as chancellor, as his three-year contract expires at the end of 2017. After multiple clashes with lawmakers, and a new makeup of the Board of Regents he works for, it remains an open question as to whether he will be back. McRaven is the second highest paid public university president in the nation making $1.5 million. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

A week ago, retired Admiral William McRaven wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he loudly proclaimed that President Trump was a, in his words, danger to the republic.

These men and women, of all political persuasions, have seen the assaults on our institutions: on the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press. They have seen our leaders stand beside despots and strongmen, preferring their government narrative to our own. They have seen us abandon our allies and have heard the shouts of betrayal from the battlefield. As I stood on the parade field at Fort Bragg, one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, “I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!”

Those words echoed with me throughout the week. It is easy to destroy an organization if you have no appreciation for what makes that organization great. We are not the most powerful nation in the world because of our aircraft carriers, our economy, or our seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.

But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?

If our promises are meaningless, how will our allies ever trust us? If we can’t have faith in our nation’s principles, why would the men and women of this nation join the military? And if they don’t join, who will protect us? If we are not the champions of the good and the right, then who will follow us? And if no one follows us — where will the world end up?

President Trump seems to believe that these qualities are unimportant or show weakness. He is wrong. These are the virtues that have sustained this nation for the past 243 years. If we hope to continue to lead the world and inspire a new generation of young men and women to our cause, then we must embrace these values now more than ever.

And if this president doesn’t understand their importance, if this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it.

I found the piece to be stunning in its historical illiteracy:

We were reminded that the Greatest Generation went to war because it believed that we were the good guys — that wherever there was oppression, tyranny or despotism, America would be there.

Seriously. This is utter bullsh**. The Greatest Generation went to war because it had war brought to it, first by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and then, a few days later, by a German declaration of war against us. The Greatest Generation fought to kick ass and go home. And, on the way, we turned over half of Europe the the Soviet Union and forcibly repatriated Russians who had fought against the USSR.

And I was also shocked by the hubris and the embrace of the failed, disastrous Responsibility to Protect (R2P) strategy that kicked off a bloodbath in Libya and an international humanitarian nightmare in Syria. Will fathers and mothers be more or less likely to send their sons and (under the aegis of the flag officers of McRaven’s cohort) daughters off to random wars of feel good, or would they prefer their kid only be put in harm’s way if some easily articulated national security threat is at hand?

But, because OrangeManBad, all he had to do was to write this and he was a hero. Had a flag officer written a similar critique about Obama, and I truly think Obama did an immense amount of damage to our foreign policy and to our domestic politics, he would have been excoriated as some sort of racist.

This, Bennet fears, is how Trump might luck into a second term. Oh, sure, the president will continue to scare moderates and independents with his erratic behavior. But Bennet wonders if Democrats might scare them even more—what with talk of seizing guns, banning fracking, guaranteeing health coverage to undocumented immigrants, raising taxes across the board, imposing political litmus tests on churches, and of course, eliminating private insurance for more than 150 million people.

“Just listen to this debate,” Bennet says, motioning toward the television. “Medicare for All shouldn’t even have made it to the debate stage. I mean, we’re a free country, and that’s fine. But of the Democrats who won in 2018, in those suburban districts, all but one person won their primary running on the public option—against candidates who supported Medicare for All. I understand this has been Bernie’s thing forever. But for some of the leading candidates to sign on to his bill gave it legitimacy. It’s just…”

He drifts off, shaking his head.

“We’re going to pick a policy we can’t even unify Democrats around, much less bring in others who could support it from the outside. Which means we’ll wind up fighting a losing battle for that instead of achieving the other stuff,” Bennet adds. “That’s not catering to the people I talk to at town halls; it’s for the people on Twitter and the people on cable news at night.”

As the debate approaches the two-hour mark, Bennet goes silent, gazing emotionlessly at the television for a prolonged stretch. Finally, I ask what’s on his mind. “I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Who can beat Trump?’” he says. “Can any of these people beat Trump?”

The combination of the weakness of the field, OrangeManBad, and the Democrat propensity so swoon and genuflect to anyone if you put enough gold braid, stars, and medals on them gets you this:

Dems are struggling to find a 2020 candidate and different names are being floated.

General Mattis still isn’t speaking out. By Admiral McRaven is. Powerful, important and overdue stuff here. It’s time for the real patriots to stand up. McRaven would make a strong SecDef. Or VP candidate. https://t.co/l1kjdNMv2z

If the Democrats want McRaven, they are entitled to him. For all of his bloviating about values, when he had a chance to actually stand up for something, he folded like a cheap suit. He had the chance to take a stand against a corrupt admissions practice of the University of Texas System, of which he was chancellor, that allowed the lackwit offspring of Texas politicians to get guaranteed enrollment. Instead, he quashed the ongoing investigation. Oh, and he was adamantly opposed to firearms on campus and very much in favor of in-state tuition for illegals. If they think his military resume is going to carry him forward, they are sadly mistaken. Any flag officer, good or bad, is going to carry a lot of baggage and have a lot of detractors with a lot of documentation.

As a friend of mine says on email:

This admixture of loud proclamation of civic virtue with corrupt and unapologetic elite self-dealing is, of course, precisely how we got Trump.

The greater problem is that McRaven has only a tangential attachment to the society he devoted his life to defending. As much as I loved my time in the Army, I’d never claim that running any military organization is remotely as complicated as dealing with a pluralistic society where 40+% of the population will oppose you out of hand, and where no decision is ever quite final.

This is mostly wishcasting and desperation, but the Democrats seem intent upon finding their Man of Horseback to usher in a Progressive Garden of Eden. None of the current field can either mount a horse, or even pick it out of a line up. McRaven just may be their man.

But there’s one problem. The Biden campaign failed to purchase www.todosconbiden.com, or even lock down the @TodosConBiden Twitter handle before announcing the new effort — prompting the president’s reelection team to do what it does best: troll.

Now, the Trump campaign is using www.todosconbiden.com to mock the former vice president, with a landing page that says in both English and Spanish, “Oops, Joe forgot about Latinos.” The page also links out to the president’s own Latino outreach coalition “Latinos for Trump.” And the @TodosConBiden Twitter account, in the possession of the Trump campaign, has already begun posting unflattering counter messaging targeting Biden.

“It is no surprise that Trump’s Campaign would resort to childish antics like this to take attention away from this President’s appalling record of separating families and using immigrants as scapegoats, fomenting hatred and white supremacy, and trying to take away health care from millions of Americans who need it,” according to Isabel Aldunate, deputy director of strategic communications/Hispanic media press secretary for the Biden campaign.

But that is only part of the story. The real story here is the way the Trump campaign can move from concept to action.

Brad Parscale had just boarded a Jet Blue flight earlier this month when the paper straw he was using ripped in half.

As he tried to keep his iced tea from spilling onto his suit, the annoyed Trump campaign manager tweeted that he was “so over paper straws.” Prodded by his wife not to leave it at that, Parscale emailed his staff from the air with an idea: Let’s sell plastic Trump straws.

In short order, the campaign sent an email to supporters with the subject line, “Making straws great again.” By the time Parscale landed in Florida, the presidential straws were already in production and an advertising campaign was up and running. The first batch sold out within hours.

No meetings. No focus groups. No consultations with enviro-whackos about what Greenpeace will think of this. Just see the opening and act.

Trump may be impeached by the House but he will not be convicted by the Senate. This certainty gives them options that the Democrats do not enjoy.

Unlike the 2016 campaign when Trump had to rely upon a wide variety of grifters to run his campaign–some foisted off on him by the GOPe and some who’d clung to him like lint to Velcro for sometime…he goes into 2020 surrounded by people he trusts and who’ve had their baptism of fire, who’ve spent their time in the pressure cooker. They are loyal and you don’t find the self-serving leaks coming out of Parscale’s operation that bedeviled Trump in 2016. In short, they have the ability to work inside OODA loop of the Democrats, to capitalize on blunders and to do damage control.

If Trump wins in 2020, the real story will be how his campaign was able to act with great decisiveness to good and bad news and turn it into votes and money.

Should Biden win the nomination…and right now I’d say that unless every current Democrat contender decides to ride the same B-737MAX to Kuala Lumpur that chance is near zero…the Trump campaign will maul him. The staffers in the Trump 2020 campaign are smart and quick and they seem to have the authority to make very quick decisions. None of that is apparent in the Biden or Warren campaigns. Both are running consultant-centric, slow-moving, and insular campaigns that are not only risk averse but see themselves as entitled to the presidency.

This is just a foretaste of the Hell that will be Biden’s existence until he hops his final AMTRAK for some prime hair sniffing on the way home to Dover.

I think the general consensus is Joe Biden basically self-immolated last night. Instead of his experience bringing gravitas to the stage, he came off as a whiny, bitter, me-too-er; as a guy who has already had all the good ideas he’s ever going to have and has to continually remind the audience of how smart and on-the-ball he used to be and if he had to make up stuff to be relevant, well, that’s the just the cost of doing business. This exchange with Elizabeth Warren will probably go down as one of the most cringeworthy moments in any debate that didn’t involved Candy Crowley and Mitt Romney.

The set up is Anderson Cooper asking, “…And so the question is, who is best prepared? We all have good ideas. The question is, who is going to be able to get it done? How can you get it done? And I’m not suggesting they can’t, but I’m suggesting that that’s what we should look at. And part of that requires you not being vague. Tell people what it’s going to cost, how you’re going to do it, and why you’re going to do it. That’s the way to get it done. Presidents are supposed to be able to persuade.”

I’m giving you the full transcript below, the parts with the strike-through have been cut from the video clip. I wanted to include them to show the full exchange.

WARREN: So you started this question with how you got something done. You know, following the financial crash of 2008, I had an idea for a consumer agency that would keep giant banks from cheating people. And all of the Washington insiders and strategic geniuses said, don’t even try, because you will never get it passed.

And sure enough, the big banks fought us. The Republicans fought us. Some of the Democrats fought us. But we got that agency passed into law. It has now forced big banks to return more than $12 billion directly to people they cheated.

I served in the Obama administration. I know what we can do by executive authority, and I will use it. In Congress, on the first day, I will pass my anti-corruption bill, which will beat back the influence of money…

COOPER: Thank you, Senator.

WARREN: … and repeal the filibuster. And the third, we want to get something done in America, we have to get out there and fight…

COOPER: Thank you, Senator.

WARREN: … for the things that touch people’s lives.

COOPER: Mayor…

BIDEN: I agree. Let me — she referenced me. I agreed with the great job she did, and I went on the floor and got you votes. I got votes for that bill. I convinced people to vote for it. So let’s get those things straight, too.

COOPER: Senator Warren, do you want to respond?

(APPLAUSE)

WARREN: I am deeply grateful to President Obama, who fought so hard to make sure that agency was passed into law, and I am deeply grateful to every single person who fought for it and who helped pass it into law. But understand…

BIDEN: You did a hell of a job in your job.

WARREN: Thank you.

You really have to watch the video to appreciate the degree to which Joe Biden loses his sh** over credit for passing a bill that establishes an agency that has been declared an unconstitutional monstrosity. What is significant here is that for the first time in his career, Biden was called out by the liberal media for his heroically athletic fantasy world. Apparently, Biden was lukewarm to the idea and is only now coming to the realization that the Democrat base is so far left that he’d better embrace Marxism if he’s to survive.

None of this bodes well for Biden. His strategy was that used by Jeb Bush–inevitability and electability. Now it is obvious that he’s neither.

Chris Cuomo attends The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Most Powerful People in Media cocktail reception at The Pool on Thursday, April 11, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

We have reached a stage where mental illness and wokeness have combined to create a perfect storm of utterly stupid behavior. The mental illness here is the wave of transgenderism that has gone from being nuts to being fashionable within the lifecycle of a fruit fly. The wokeness part of it is the notion that you can demand other people use whatever pronouns you wish to describe you. The perfect storm of stupid behavior hit Fredo Cuomo last night like a ballpeen hammer on the forehead.

At the Democrat forum on exotic sexual proclivities, Kamala Harris was interviewed by Fredo about her views on adultery…sorry, that was a joke…about her policies in regards to the alphabet folks should the nation have the misfortune to elect her as president. This is her intro:

Instead of powering through it with a ‘lighten up, Francis’ moment–it isn’t like CNN’s ratings could be hurt and Cuomo’s job wouldn’t be in jeopardy due to his family name–Cuomo acted just like Fredo after Mo Greene whipped his a**.

PLEASE READ: When Sen. Harris said her pronouns were she her and her's, I said mine too. I should not have. I apologize. I am an ally of the LGBTQ community, and I am sorry because I am committed to helping us achieve equality. Thank you for watching our townhall.

In a way you have to feel sorry for Joe Biden. In best Politburo fashion, which is the only way the Democrat Party works, he has served in the fields and worked his way to the top of the hierarchy. Like a good soldier, he accepted his orders and stood aside in 2016, despite being a much stronger candidate, for the “historic” candidacy of a corrupt, unlikable and unaccomplished (unless we want to call being married to Bill Clinton an accomplishment) tour director for Fort Marcy Park (just joking, you leftwing goobers, lighten up), Hillary Clinton.

Now, in this last chance to grasp the brass ring of the presidency, QuidProJoe finds himself enveloped in a miasma of outright corruption and very corrupt looking activities which also largely involve his coke-snorting, philandering son, Hunter Biden. Ordinarily, we can expect the leftwing media to run interference for Democrat candidates on just about everything, see, for instance, how the media covered manifest and blatant corruption that characterized the Clinton Foundation. So one can excuse Biden for being butthurt when the New York Times ran this op-ed yesterday: What Hunter Biden Did Was Legal — And That’s the Problem

In December 2013, Joe and Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China; less than two weeks after the trip, Hunter’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, which he founded with two other businessmen in June 2013, finalized a deal to open a fund, BHR Partners, whose largest shareholder is the government-run Bank of China, even though he had scant background in private equity. (Representatives of the fund claim that the timing of the deal and the Bidens’ trip to China was coincidental.) Thus far, the firm has invested about $2.1 billion, according to its website.

In trying to disprove a link between the father’s powerful position and the son’s surprising success, Hunter Biden’s lawyers claim he did not take an equity stake in BHR Partners until after Joe Biden left office. Hunter, whose company, according to its financial records, held an equity stake in the fund, took a board seat when it was founded, in December 2013. At the same time, his business partner, Devon Archer, was vice chairman.

With the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, Joe Biden became point person in Ukraine as well. That same year, Hunter Biden landed a board position with the Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings. Despite having no background in energy or Ukraine, the vice president’s son was paid as much as $50,000 a month, according to financial records. (He left the board in early 2019.)

To say the Biden campaign went batsh** crazy is to indulge in massive understatement.

In a Wednesday evening letter addressed to Dean Baquet, the Biden campaign excoriated The New York Times for its recent coverage of Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and Ukraine. The letter was written by deputy campaign manager and comms director Kate Bedingfield. She expressed extreme displeasure with how The Times has covered the debunked notion Biden abused his office to benefit his son.

Bedingfield wrote that The Times, which published a widely panned story in May by reporter Ken Vogel and then-freelancer Iuliia Mendel, “had an outsized hand in the spread” of the “baseless conspiracy theory.”

In Bedingfield’s words, “What was especially troubling about the Times’s active participation in this smear campaign is that prior to its reporting on the subject by Ken Vogel, this conspiracy had been relegated to the likes of Breitbart, Russian propaganda, and another conspiracy theorist, regular Hannity guest John Solomon.”

Quick glossary:

“widely panned” means truthful but didn’t fit the Democrat narrative.

“debunked” means they can’t answer the charges so all they can do is claim they don’t exist.

“conspiracy theorist” is anyone who doesn’t agree with the Democrat narrative…like the people who claimed from the beginning that the Russia Hoax was…well…a hoax.

Biden is pulling the old coaching ploy of screaming at the ref on this play in hopes that he will get a better call on the next one. It won’t work. The corruption of Joe Biden’s influence peddling to assist and protect his son is simply too blatant and too easy to understand. More is going to trickle out and the New York Times will either have to take the lead in breaking those stories or begrudgingly following other outlets as they do. But the story is going to come out. The second reason that it won’t work is that when you have a newspaper that will hire a member of its editorial board who boasted about she hates men and white people, you should be bright enough to figure out that a septuagenarian, melanin-challenged, penis-possessing (making an assumption here, I have no personal or second hand knowledge that this is the case) candidate like Biden is not going to get treated all that well. The New York Times’s reporting staff is firmly in the bag for Elizabeth Warren and any story that hurts Biden helps her.

FILE – In this Sept. 8, 2012 file photo, Vice President Joe Biden kisses a supporter during a campaign event in Zanesville, Ohio. Obama goes airborne in a doozie of a bear hug with a pizza guy in Florida. Joe Biden cozies up with a biker chick in Ohio. Even the more reserved Mitt Romney seems to be loosening up some with people he meets on the campaign trail. Kissing babies and slapping backs are so yesterday. The 2012 candidates are putting their all into the campaign cliche of pressing the flesh. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

New fundraising numbers have been posted by the Democrat primary candidates and they show some interesting shifts in the field.

If you ignore the silliness of Yang and Williamson, the real story is that Joe Biden is in a death spiral. His fundraising is down by 30%. He’s slipping in the polls, especially Iowa and New Hampshire. His South Carolina “firewall” looks very flimsy. The news swirling around about Hunter Biden’s financial shenanigans is not going to get better and you can bet President Trump is not going to let up so long as the Ukraine phone call bullsh** is being propped up as grounds for impeachment. Beyond that, Biden’s campaign staff is as sclerotic as Biden so by the time it responds to Charge A we’ve already moved on to Charge F (see my post Donald Trump, Impeachment, And John Boyd’s OODA Loop). Beyond the slowness of his campaign’s reaction time, Biden is not a fighter. He’s simply not temperamentally suited to engaging in the bare-knuckle brawl that Trump seems to relish as is shown by his response to the corruption allegations against his son. You’ll also notice that Biden has been abandoned by his fellow Democrats and is left to fight this out with just the help of his media friends and fluffers.

As a footnote, Harris is also toast…I find this sort of shocking as I would have bet good money that she’d be one of the top three candidates going into Iowa.

Everything is going Warren’s way. Biden is fading. Harris and Buttigieg have been revealed to be insubstantial lightweights. Bernie Sanders is unlikely to go back on the trail. Right now, if you were forced to make a prediction you’d say that she is the nominee. We’ll see how she does when President Trump and his team drop the twitching, tattered corpse of Joe Biden’s campaign and turn their gimlet eyes of Pocahontas.

FILE – In this Jan. 30, 2010, file photo, Vice President Joe Biden, left, with his son Hunter, right, at the Duke Georgetown NCAA college basketball game in Washington. Hunter Biden is expressing regret for being discharged from the Navy Reserve amid published reports that he tested positive for cocaine. The Wall Street Journal reports that Hunter Biden failed the drug test last year and was discharged in February. In a statement issued Thursday, Oct. 16, Biden doesn’t say why he was discharged. He says he’s embarrassed that his actions led to his discharge and that he respects the Navy’s decision. The vice president’s office declined to comment.(AP Photo/Nick Wass, File)

It’s been a tough week for Joe Biden. What started out as a cheap, premeditated political hit on President Trump has morphed into a situation that may very well doom Biden’s bid for the Democrat nomination. Joe Biden, to all appearances, bullied a nation in need of US aid into firing a prosecutor who was nipping at the heels of his son, Hunter Biden. The central problem is that he explanation is tortured and impossible to credit, absent large quantities of alcohol or a lobotomy. On the other hand, the allegation is as old as mankind. A powerful man has a shiftless, grifting, ne’er-do-well son who he dotes on and protects. The son profits. The father risks his own reputation to keep the favored offspring out of trouble. The story rarely ends well.

A lot of people on the left really aren’t bright enough to understand the antipathy the average American feels about powerful people putting their nitwit gits in the way of wealth and keeping them out of prison when anyone else would be doing hard time. Nate Silver is a great example.

One thing I don't get is why Biden hasn't fundraised more aggressively off the Ukraine story.

‘Splain to me exactly what the fundraising appeal is. Something like this?

“Hi, I’m Joe Biden. I helped my cokehead, philandering son get a $1.5 billion investment from Communist China. I got him a seat on the board of directors of a company in an industry he knows nothing about in a country whose language he does not speak that earned him $600,000 per year. And when those bastards threatened to investigate him, I gave them six hours to fire the whole bunch. And the did. That’s because, just like you, I believe in family. So please send me money so I can continue to do God’s work in helping my family.”

“I think it’s the beginning not the end,” Biden said about what he anticipates will be more attacks against his family.

“I’m also confident the American people know me, and they know my son.”

Biden said his son will be a visible part of the campaign.

“He’s a fine man. He’s been through hell.”

It may be the only solution that he has. I suppose Biden loyalists (whatever the hell they look like because every sane person knows that Biden’s only selling points are a) electability and b) “it’s my turn”) will get all weepy over Biden sticking up for his boy but every time he walks on stage with Hunter Biden there, the only thought in the mind of most folks will be his corruption and lack of moral character.

FILE – In this Jan. 30, 2010, file photo, Vice President Joe Biden, left, with his son Hunter, right, at the Duke Georgetown NCAA college basketball game in Washington. Hunter Biden is expressing regret for being discharged from the Navy Reserve amid published reports that he tested positive for cocaine. The Wall Street Journal reports that Hunter Biden failed the drug test last year and was discharged in February. In a statement issued Thursday, Oct. 16, Biden doesn’t say why he was discharged. He says he’s embarrassed that his actions led to his discharge and that he respects the Navy’s decision. The vice president’s office declined to comment.(AP Photo/Nick Wass, File)

One of the central elements in the ongoing kerfuffle about President Trump’s conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine is over the investigation into Hunter Biden’s mysterious appointment as a member of the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest private natural gas company, Burisma. While Joe Biden was vice-president and self-described “point person” for the Obama administration on Ukraine, one of his portfolios was trying to convince the Ukrainians to improve transparency in their economy and suppress corruption. To that end, Burisma hired Hunter Biden who, by the way, had zero experience in much of anything other than grifting off the family name and keeping hookers gainfully employed, as a member of its board of directors. The salary Biden fils received has been variously reported as $50,000 or $80,000 per month.

To be charitable, let’s put aside our disbelief and pretend that Hunter Biden was hired because of his totally mad business skills and just ignore the facts and circumstances surrounding Joe Biden’s demand that a Ukrainian prosecutor who may have targeted his son be fired. A quick test of the legitmacy of Hunter Biden’s salary is its comparability to other, similarly situated companies. It is estimated that Burisma’s earnings are about $400 million annually.

Burisma is not quite 1/4 the size of the smallest company on this list. The group of smallest companies pays between $285-$330,000 per year for a non-employee director. Hunter Biden was paid $600,000 (at least) for being a board member of a company whose language he did not speak, whose home country he’d never lived in, and which was in an industry about which Hunter Biden was pig-ignorant.

ADDENDUM.

An alert Twitter follower notes that in most other cases, non-employee directors were paid in a combination of cash and stock, often as much as 60% stock. Biden was paid in 100% cash.

@streiffredstate As you pointed out in your article Hunter made almost double of what average board members made despite no experience or launguage skills. What is also interesting is that Bharisma paid Hunter, unlike others on chart 100% in cash. Unless he also got stock? pic.twitter.com/2qqmZc9GYM

You can pretend, if you want, that there was a purpose in hiring Hunter Biden beyond currying favor with his father. You can pretend, as did John Kerry’s State Department, that there was no conflict of interest or quid pro quo involved that involved pressure being removed from Ukraine in return for employing Joe Biden’s kid. You can pretend that Joe Bidens’ interest in firing that prosecutor was some high minded expression of unity with the EU. Just don’t expect anyone else to go along with that sick fantasy.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., winks as she jokes with other senators on the Senate Banking Committee ahead of a hearing on the nomination of Marvin Goodfriend to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

I really doubt you’re going to enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this headline.

This is the story. A 24-year-old ex-Marine who is a bodybuilder is going to claim he was banging Elizabeth Warren for “several months.” I’m assuming he is deaf-blind and has learned how to suppress the gag reflex.

All of this is totally tongue-in-cheek…the face cheek not the other cheek, ugh, you people appall me at times…because Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl are grifters and fraudsters (Wohl in currently under federal indictment for securities fraud). The were the two brainiacs behind the press conference that accused Robert Mueller of sexual harassment only to have the accuser not show and they masterminded the sexual assault allegation against Pete Buttigieg that ended when the accuser confessed he was being paid.

This is the kind of cheap chickensh** that you’d expect from a CNN employee. What is unclear is what they think they are accomplishing with this nonsense.

Look, I get that this is BS and the "decorated, former U.S. Marine" will mysteriously cancel on the event, but Elizabeth Warren being a voracious cougar who hooks up with 24-year-old bodybuilders would make me want to vote for her pic.twitter.com/P6lOdAFxwt

I'm familiar with Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman's tactics. I'm also familiar with the sexist double standards used against powerful woman running for office. But I have to say, I never saw this one coming.

I don’t know why anyone ever thought Joe Biden would win. On a good day, when he was sniffing the hair of random women, or telling racist jokes, or lying about his family history, or shaking down banks for large loans he would never have to repay, the best you could say about Joe Biden was that he was inoffensive and could work a small group of elderly voters in a workmanlike manner. Add to that his age and obvious cognitive impairment, and what you have left is the sad shell of a Democrat apparatchik whose appeal to the Democrat base is somewhere between “it’s my turn” and “I’m not batsh** crazy like those other guys” and to the general electorate is “I’m not Donald Trump.”

While the RCP average (which, let’s be honest, is a lot like averaging apples and oranges and declaring the result to be kumquats) still shows Biden with a 7 point lead, that number is both a) meaningless (as there is no national primary) and b) deceptive. Over the past three weeks we’ve seen a major shift in the landscape with Elizabeth Warren pulling even with Biden.

With more than four months until Iowa’s Feb. 3 caucus, there is plenty of time for the dynamics of the race to change. But there’s also cause for some alarm for Biden. In New Hampshire, Tyson’s just-completed 600-likely voter poll shows Warren with 18 percent of the vote and Biden 15 percent in an open-ended ballot question. It’s a dramatic change from his last poll, with Biden dropping 18 points while Warren gained 7 — a 25-point shift.
…
Biden’s level of support in South Carolina makes it his firewall state, but even in South Carolina there are troubling signs of erosion. While he remains on top, among black voters, who are more than 60 percent of the Democratic electorate, Biden has plummeted 19 points in Tyson’s polls. That’s a potential leading indicator of the problems he could face after South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary when many of the minority-heavy Southeastern states — as well as Texas and California — beginning voting on Super Tuesday, March 3, and thereafter.

Florida, where about 28 percent of the Democratic primary electorate is black, votes March 17. Biden is in first there with 24 percent of the Democratic vote, losing 15 points since May in Tyson’s polls. Warren moved into second with 11 percent, a 6-point increase while Sanders is in third with 5 percent, an 11-point loss since before the first candidate debate.

The percentage of Democratic voters who were undecided also shot up by double-digits in polls of the state.

In Iowa, Warren has pulled ahead of Joe Biden — marginally — for the first time, according to the latest Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll released Saturday. Pollster J. Ann Selzer’s highly regarded survey of caucus-goers showed Warren was benefiting from an enthusiasm gap — 32 percent said they’re “extremely enthusiastic” about caucusing for the Massachusetts senator, compared with 22 percent those who support the former vice president.

My contention was, and is, that the Ukraine silliness is going to mortally wound Biden because no matter how much the left and NeverTrump lecture people on how all the Euros wanted the Ukrainian prosecutor fired because he is corrupt no one really believes that while everyone understands Joe Biden using his clout to protect his son. And so long as President Trump continues to hammer on that subject, the narrative will stick to Biden and his core quality that would lead anyone to vote for him–electability–becomes more and more tenuous.

The New York Times reports that Biden’s supporters are running scared and are organizing a Super PAC to staunch the bleeding:

Allies of Joseph R. Biden Jr., concerned about his slipping poll numbers in the Democratic presidential primary and an onslaught of attacks from President Trump, are weighing whether to mobilize a super PAC supporting Mr. Biden and have held conversations with wealthy donors to gauge their interest in contributing money.

I can save you the trouble. Zero. None. Zilch. Nada. Because that isn’t how any of this works. Biden doesn’t have a massively engaged fan base. He can’t pack arenas for his stump speeches. He was the comfort candidate in the beginning and now he’s dying and it is only going to get worse. No one opens their checkbooks to the kind of donation that is needed to make a difference in a campaign when the candidate is losing momentum and doesn’t seem to understand why the hell he’s even running beyond providing more opportunities for Hunter Biden to grift.

At the bottom of that NYT piece was this rather ominous statement:

The next round of fund-raising reports, due after the end of the month, will also reveal whether Mr. Biden is still in a strong financial position relative to his nearest competitors. In the last quarter, Mr. Biden raised the second-most money of any candidate, trailing only Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. But he finished June with less money in the bank than Mr. Buttigieg, Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders and Senator Kamala Harris of California.

If Joe Biden loses Iowa and New Hampshire, he can hope all he wants for a South Carolina win but if it is anything less than a blowout, the momentum will be seen to be with Warren. And unless fundraising picks up, Biden won’t be around for South Carolina.

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